Benedict XVI, celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, on December 8, 2005. Photograph: Ettore Ferrari/epa/Corbis

James Weiss, an associate professor in Boston College’s theology department, tells of hearing from a friend shortly after Pope Benedict XVI issued his first encyclical early this year. The friend asked, “What is he condemning now?”

Benedict’s reputation preceded him when he was elevated to the papacy in April 2005. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had become known widely for his investigations into theological dissent by Catholic theologians, as well as for admonishing the faithful, including Catholic politicians, against complicity in social evils—legal abortion and same-sex marriage, especially.

Yet, at an April 5 forum titled “Pope Benedict After One Year,” Weiss and three other members of BC’s theology department agreed that Benedict has thus far transcended Ratzinger, in this fresh pontificate. “Benedict XVI’s style has brought a major surprise,” said Weiss, a Church historian. He “has not lowered the boom. He has not cracked down on persons or trends in the Church as expected. And on numerous occasions where he could have denounced the culture of relativism, he has conspicuously refrained from doing so.”

That last reference was to a homily delivered hours before the start of the conclave to select a new pope, in which then Cardinal Ratzinger condemned an imperiously dissolute culture, unrestrained by truth and morality, a “dictatorship of relativism that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the ‘I’ and its whims as the ultimate measure.” At the time, the chances of such a polarizing figure as Ratzinger emerging as pontiff seemed remote, in the judgment of analysts like Theology Professor Thomas Groome, who heads BC’s Institute for Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

At the late-afternoon forum held in McGuinn 121, Groome gamely acknowledged that both the papal election and the first papal year turned out contrary to his expectations. “Among other surprising things is the slow start he has made. He certainly gave us the impression as Cardinal Ratzinger that he thought there were many things seriously awry in the Church, and we just presumed he would rush in to fix them,” Groome said. “In fact, it [the first year] has been fairly uneventful.”

During the discussion, held by BC’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and moderated by its director, Political Science Professor Alan Wolfe, much of the focus was on what the German pope has not done or said.

Last August, in his major sermon at the World Youth Day gathering in Cologne, “He did not denounce contemporary youth culture, as expected,” Weiss said. Nor has Benedict made provocative statements about the Islamic world, which he did as Cardinal Ratzinger (for example, in August 2004, airing his view that Turkey did not belong in the European Union, being culturally “in permanent contrast to Europe”). And in his only encyclical to date, Deus Caritas Est (“God is love”), made public on January 25, Benedict praised sexual love as a manifestation of divine love but did not press the issue of homosexuality, recounted Weiss. Even the Vatican’s decree against homosexuals in seminaries, last November, left discretion to the local bishops.

What’s more, the papal door has not been closed to the controversial priest-scholar Hans Kung as it was during John Paul’s long reign. Last September, Benedict welcomed Kung for a private dinner and spent what the Holy See later described as four “friendly” hours with the dissenting theologian, with whom he had served as a scholarly periti (Latin for “expert”) at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The two reportedly did not discuss the matter of Kung’s authorization to teach as a Catholic theologian, revoked by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1979, two years before Ratzinger became its prefect.

“The promise here is that Benedict does listen,” said Kenneth Himes, a Franciscan priest and the theology department chair, noting the Kung encounter. Himes added that he believes the pope is distinguishing between Roman Catholic dogma, on which he is a stalwart, and practical matters of pastoral judgment, about which he appears to be “quite dialogical.”

When Ratzinger ascended to the papacy, testimonies to his many excellent qualities would have seemed unlikely coming from liberal or mainstream American theologians and commentators like those at the forum. But during her presentation Associate Theology Professor Mary Ann Hinsdale, IHM, described Benedict as “a very humble man. He is also very erudite and cultured and a true teacher, as well as, I would say—even though I am not in complete agreement with him all the time—a really good theologian.” Commenting on a series of talks given by the pope on basic doctrinal themes, the Immaculate Heart of Mary sister stretched her eyes wide open as if to show surprise at hearing her own words: “There’s nothing [in those talks] that I could disagree with.”

Some of these plaudits reflected less reverently upon the man whom many lift up as “John Paul the Great.” While the late pope “tried to be the pastor of the planet, Benedict tries to be the self-effacing steward of a tradition,” Weiss submitted. “Benedict does not see Western history culminating in his own millennial significance, as John Paul did. Rather for Benedict, being pope is about the office, not the personality.” Picking up that baton, Groome ventured to say, “Benedict seems in some ways to be more of a pope than John Paul was, more in keeping with the tradition of the papacy, not speaking his own personal theology as readily because he knows he’s now representing the consensus faith of our Church.”

There were some boundaries, though, in this bonding between the panelists and the pontiff. Unease about his intentions toward Islam surfaced more than once during the conversation.

In the past year, statements from the Holy See have seemed to augur a recalibration of John Paul II’s deferential tack toward Islam. Although Benedict has not repeated his past complaints about Islamic inroads into “Christian” Europe, he has pushed for better treatment of Christians in Muslim lands, and, in a reference to terrorism, stated last August that Christians and Muslims must “turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people.” On May 15, Benedict articulated a doctrine of “reciprocity,” which essentially holds that if the religious rights of Muslims are respected in historically Christian countries, then Islamic countries should offer their Christian minorities equal respect. “Benedict is starting to play a much tougher game in his relations to Islam,” said Himes. “I’m not judging whether that’s right or wrong. I’m just suggesting there’s a risk there, and it’s not clear at this point how that’s going to play itself out.”

In Himes’s view, another “foreboding” aspect of the new pontificate is Benedict’s treatment of social justice in his otherwise lauded encyclical. The other three panelists echoed Himes’s vexation with what he characterized as the encyclical’s “exaltation of charity at the risk of eclipsing justice,” and specifically the pope’s suggestion that the Church concern itself with charity and leave justice to the state (which, on the face of it, contradicts past papal pronouncements that the promotion of justice is an indispensable part of the Church’s mission).

Left to be seen is how the 79-year-old pope will handle the continuing clergy sexual abuse crisis and a raft of other internal Church questions such as the status of women, though Groome made a daring prediction that the Vatican would at least investigate the possibility of ordaining women to the permanent diaconate, a ministry now open only to men. Such an advance would be tokenism, he conceded—“but I think it would be a lovely token.”

William Bole is a writer based in Massachusetts.

Read more by William Bole